Monday, June 15, 2009

Assorted Ramblings

[Content Disclosure: A Little of This & A Little of That]

Just a mishmash of meanderings in and around the human psyche from my observations over the past several weeks, months, days and hours.

Otis on Twitter, Identity Theft and Cyber Sink Holes:"Let’s be clear: If you are a public figure, ever hope to be, or are serving as a PR consultant or publicist for someone who stands to be even mildly famous, you are being irresponsible for not securing a spot on Twitter and Facebook. Yes, Twitter and Facebook can be vapid holes of despair from which nothing good can ever rise. They also happen to be places where hundreds of thousands of people spend hours each day. If you are a politician or leader, these people are your constituents. If you have any hope of connecting with these people you need to be on top of it. At the very least, you need to have “your people” on top of it. And you need to check out who is using your name."

Nothing is quite so painful than to be following the WSOP tweeterverse and have some tangential player have a cyber-meltdown for all to read (divorce, broken air-conditioning, cursed by the poker gods, loss of bladder control, rolled by a hooker, did I mention divorce and who gets custody of the commemorative plates). As the Rob Lowe character on Brothers and Sisters said: "Get a filter for God's sake!"

Vapid holes of despair from which nothing good can ever rise. I promise Otis a citation every single time I used this line.

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Bagels and OCD: When toasting two bagels with only a two slice toaster. Do you take the first bagel out when it is 3/4 done and then fully toast the second bagel before you finish the first? You know so the first one does not cool off before you get to consume it.

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Have you ever been stuck at a poker table or in a doctor's office or nirvana forbid on an airplane and the person next to you is going on about a topic you are intimately familiar with and they are just chronically misinformed. I mean usually it's because they are stupid. And yes ladies they are always men and always completely imbued with the 100% righteous knowledge that they are speaking the truth. It happens a lot to WSOP poker media when we take a day off to play in one of the smaller rooms here in Las Vegas. Yesterday, I played at Flamingo and the fool/tool from Indiana on my left knew all there was to know about the Series. You see he played for two hours in the most recent $1500 Donkument and that gave him his status of expertise.

I did not intervene in his brilliant pontifications but when he began his insider discourse on Mike Matusow and Phil Hellmuth, I thought my buddy at the table would explode from the repressed laughter. At one point, following a particularly erroneous Matusow comment, he even said: "Well this guy should know, he wrote the book." But the expert just ignored that and went on with his highly informative fiction.

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On an international note. It seems lots of news coverage is being given today to the elections in Iran. It appears that they may not have reported the true vote totals. Shock and anger seems to be the overwhelmingly popular reactions. I am shocked that more informed media types are not more prone to observe -- well Duh! And less we forget: Land of the Free, Home of the Brave: Florida November 2000. And before all of my newly acquired conservative friends get their panties in a knot or a painful cameltoe.... If the voters had gotten Al Gore, in all likelihood Barack would not be president today. Be careful which elections you steal.

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You didn't miss my guest spot over on the The Tao of Poker All-Stars did you? Just one of the infrequent opportunities for R-rated Shrinkable observations. It's called: "Ladies of the Night: WSOP version."